Senator Michael Bennet (on today's Morning Edition NPR show), about the House Shutdown of the government: "People should be upset. The government is closed. It's an outrage. It's ridiculous. It's an embarrassment. There's a reason we have a [5%] approval rate.

"I used to spend a lot of time wondering why anyone would want to work in a place with a [5%] approval rate... if your ideology is about dismantling the federal government, having a [5%] approval rate suits you just find, because you get to go home and say, 'See how horrible these people are?'

"The more degraded they can make the government seem, the more it suits their ideological purposes."

Hear, freakin' hear. It's all so clear to me now.

He also points out that "The divide between Democrats and Republicans is less than the divide that exists in the Republican Party."

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I swear, they want to go back to their idealized version of the wild west. Where we don't need government, but somehow there's never any crime, never any homelessness, never any starvation, never any illness. Where schools exist because teachers don't need salaries, and the buildings appear as if by magic. AAARGH!

And yet reality will never bite these idiots because there are so many safety nets under THEM already that they'll never ever hit bottom. Which is much more than most of us ever get.

And yes, on the divide between Dems and Repubs being narrower than the divide within the Republican party-I agree!I'm helping campaign for the Dem candidate for my local state representative (to the Kansas legislature), and we are focusing on Dems at the moment, but we are also planning on actively pursuing disgruntled Republicans in the near future.

Thanks! I have spoken to A LOT of people in my area who are really fed up with Brownback, and Kobach, and all of their ilk. They really could care less about their income taxes (or at least they don't seem to complain about them), but they really don't like the idea of higher sales taxes and property taxes. I wonder what they will think next year when the new income tax schedules pop up on their tax returns. That's when things are going to get fun!

And we just got redistricted last year, and got a new Representative who had to move into our district in order to have the largest majority of his previous voters. So there's not a lot of name recognition for him. Von, on the other hand, has a small business in McPherson (he makes gravestones and monuments), grew up in Windom, does some farming, and seems to know everyone and his brother, from all spectrums of the population.